9 Of The Most Polluted Places In The World (PHOTOS)

Between 1930 and 1998, Dzerzhinsk was the dumping site for 300,000 tons of improperly disposed of chemical waste. 300,000 people are affected by the city's chemical and toxic byproduct pollution, such as sarin and VX gas. The pollution is a result of Cold War-era manufacturing of chemical weapons. According to Mother Nature Network, in 2003, the city’s death rate surpassed its birth rate by 260 percent.

Okay, so it could be worse than Columbus, WI, where the worst is some dairy feedlot pollution, last year's chemical fire, and the mosquito swarms.

Still amused to this day that doctors in Kentuck told my folks we should move to Arizona to "cure" my sister's childhood asthma. If she was already blue in KY, she would have been downright purple in AZ--you could watch the smog settle every day from our farm, which was slightly outside of town and elevated about 1000 feet over the nasty valley. But with those dust storms, particles were always bad enough to justify a bandit kerchief at all times.

STILL better that Russia or China!!

9 Of The Most Polluted Places In The World (PHOTOS)
Huffington Post, by Barbara Fenig - First Posted: 08-31-10 08:26 AM - Updated: 08-31-10 03:24 PM

From the highways of Los Angeles to the Citarum River of Bandung, Indonesia, earth's most polluted city of Linfen, China to the streets of London, the world is laden with man-made pollution. Chemical, air, water and oil pollution ruin the environment, cause premature deaths, spoil the world's resources and worsen climate change.

As the world's population soars to nearly 7 billion, we here at HuffPost Green thought that it time to investigate some of the world's most polluted places. Check out our slideshow of nine of the most polluted places in the world. Find out which city's death rate surpasses its birth rate by 260 percent. Or which city has 50,000 people die prematurely each year due to man-made air pollution.


*cough, cough*